Why Facebook Failed Our Censorship Test
eff.org
eff.org
[...] after an inmate in New Mexico was sentenced to 90 days in solitary confinement because his family posted updates and photos to his Facebook account on his behalf. [1]
What? Why? What business does the state have in that? And the state messing with your private property in this way without a court order seems plain illegal to me.
[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/06/facebook-reforms-inmat...
I can understand a parole officer or prison official wanting access to something like messages and friends lists to make sure that they are reconnecting with unsavory characters, but that's about it. Banning Facebook pages outright for inmates seems excessive and counter-productive.
The thing is that when you invoke 'they' you don't mean Facebook. Facebook as a corporation doesn't care about the general public seeing how prisons are run.
The government - and where it shares coffers with private prison moguls - cares.
The government and the private prison industry are able to project their goals through Facebook.
Comment Signature: http://pastie.org/private/niydodwbuj4ouxutk47fza
Offenders in the custody or supervision of the Department are not permitted access to the Internet, nor are they permitted to obtain access to the Internet through third parties.
It also notes the sentence in this instance was overturned once the EFF and ACLU got involved.
[0] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/07/new-mexico-inmate-face...
What mirderers haven't been charged that you're referring too? Ferguson was a clear case of self defense; you attack a cop, you will get put down. How is that even controversial? Don't attack cops. Common sense. In Baltimore, those cops were charged. As far as murder, do you know what the legal definition of murder is? How about manslaughter? How about intent? You're obviously not a lawyer. I'm interested in if you are outraged that Dorian Johnson hasn't yet been charged for obstruction of justice for lying to the police about brown being shot in the back? How about his claim that Brown was running away? If you want justice, then Dorian needs to be charged. But I don't think you care about actual justice. You just like jumping on the anti-cop, everyone is racists bandwagon. Facts apparently aren't as important as smashing windows and starting riots over imagined injustices. The Baltimore guy had been arrested dozens of times. Why do we care about him and not the 28 people shot in Chicago almost every weekend? Do you even know the name of a single shooting victim from last weekend in Chicago? Where's their justice? Perhaps you should care about justice for the victims of crime rather than the perpetrators of it. But ok, let's worry about Facebook for prisoners; that's totally important.
Here's a copy of the Derpartment of Justice's rather frank report into Ferguson Police Dept: http://interactive.guim.co.uk/embed/documentcloud/index.html...
A few of the chapter headings:
III. Ferguson Law Enforcement Efforts Are Focused On Generating Revenue... 9
IV.A.1: FPD Engages in a Pattern of Unconstitutional Stops and Arrests in Violation of the Fourth Ammendment... 16
IV.A.2: FPD Engages in a Pattern of First Ammendment Violations... 24
IV.A.3: FPD Engages in a Pattern of Excessive Force in Violation of the Fourth Ammendment... 28
IV.C.2: Ferguson Law Enforcement Practices Are Motivated In Part By Discriminatory Intent in Violation of The Fourteeth Ammendment and Other Federal Laws... 70
IV.D.1: Ferguson's Unlawful Police and Court Practices Have Led to Distrust and Resentment Among Many in Ferguson... 79
The main reason these sorts of rules seem to exist is as an attempt to prevent gang leaders who are in prison from continuing to effectively run their gang.
Now in practice this ends up requiring a fairly draconian crackdown on communications that may well not solve the problem of running gangs anyway. But this is the "why", in a nutshell.
Also, as it is with many blue collar jobs, its a job that employs them and support their family, or, self. No greater intention, good or bad
Content I've written was censored when others shared it on Facebook-- e.g. the essay accompanying the release of 30GB of previously paywalled JSTOR documents (https://thepiratebay.gd/torrent/6554331/Papers_from_Philosop...), was silently hidden from the receiver when people tried sharing it on Facebook.
I doubt any government asked them to do this-- especially considering how fast it was suppressed.
Focusing only on government "requested" censorship likely ignores even the majority of government _induced_ censorship: Consider the censorship executed through soft power like a fear displeasing the powers that be and that resulting in less favorable policy or the loss of lucrative contracts. Not to mention censorship which occurs for merely private economic gains-- which might be tolerable in a true private space; but should not be tolerated in places which serve the social role online of public forums and common carriers.
Is it beneficial to the public to mark facebook down for denying inmates access, when presumably this is just belt-and-suspenders on top of physical control of the inmates, while not carefully exploring the other kinds of censorship they and their competitors in the pseudo-public-forum business engage in?
EDIT: To be clear. I do think Facebook should be disclosing things. I was making a sarcastic comment about how it's nearly impossible to trust what companies are publishing anyway because of the nasty gag orders and secret courts.
Most of the proles aren't too aware that their feed is heavily manipulated away from certain topics...
Facebook is also part of a network of other American Social Media companies that have automated systems to block content posted that match certain patterns and known propaganda efforts by other nations.
Recently an anti-TPP website was blocked simultaneously across several communication providers (https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/38pmg8/hey_redd...). This was a mistake as the website name closely matched the name of a Russian Anti-TPP propaganda campaign.
The mere existence of the ability to coordinate content blocking across service providers means that a censorship network exists - the question becomes whether it is 'abused'.
It's difficult to ascertain abuse, of course, given the Obama Administrations policy with regard to censorship and propaganda and its weakening of the Smith-Mundt Anti-Propaganda Act. The Administration believes that the US government is not responsible for having its influence operations online spill over to affect American people - it is merely prohibited from actively and specifically targeting Americans. That is, the new policy is that it's okay - even expected - for Americans to be 'collateral damage' in censorship and propaganda campaigns.
Thinkers like Cass Sunstein are traded high up in the US Government - Sunstein wrote a book on the 'Problem of Free Speech'. Broadly this influential Washington Legal Scholar believes that speech that is actively harmful or misinformed can and should be 'addressed' by the state - and he recommends ways in which that can happen.
The Snowden documents reveal that (so far as we know non-specific American targeting) the mass surveillance networks are intrinsically tied to influence operation capabilities - outside those capabilities at the GCHQ (which legally are not prevented from targeting Americans) - and who engage quite heavily in psychological influence campaigns.
I have personally, repeatedly witnessed Facebook selectively block posts of mine linking Wikileaks material, the Snowden documents (when they were first being published), and leaked drafts of the Trans Pacific Partnership and watched as others complained about having their posts trying to organize protests on May Day blocked similarly.
It's true also that Facebook has been associated with at least two studies on societal manipulation programs with researchers that are funded by the Department of Defense in the same area. Many people remember the "Emotion Manipulation Study" - fewer the vote influence study. These sorts of programs have been called for in the past 10 years of Defense Document planning and DARPA today, under their SMISC program, study similarly how to shape and track ideas in social media networks like Twitter.
I'm honestly glad that the EFF is finally giving this issue some attention.
Psychological influence attacks against the public by governments are as old as time, and quite insidious. Remember on the day of Benghazi how the government tried to distract the public with the mention of that irrelevant video? They're still doing this. They think we're pawns that are easy to manipulate with information, even when the truth comes out and leaves egg on their face time and time again.
Every incidence of Facebook blocking like you indicate should be documented and dispersed publicly via non-controlled channels-- even 4chan would do, despite its recent clamp down on free speech. It's no secret that the US government is at the helm of these efforts to censor, silence, and manipulate the public.
I'm honestly waiting on the EFF, ACLU, and other human rights groups (and the public) to take a hard stance and declare outright that the Western neoliberal governments are malicious actors who are actively fighting against their citizens. It's been a long road from liberty to here, and we need to start fighting back.
CAIS is a separate concept from psychological warfare that happens to weaponize American media that will also ultimately be consumed by Americans such as "The Interview" (revealed by the SONY hack leaks) or the use of front page New York Times article placement for Military Deception in the invasion of Fallujah. It is different because it specifically seeks to encourage the public to support military operations and wars: Americans are the audience.
It is also true that legally the US government is allowed to perform influence operations ("strategic communications") on Americans during states of emergency. There are reports of this being done during both Occupy and Ferguson (in Ferguson there was a media blackout zone placed over the city and the US government worked with airline companies to deny journalist travel to Ferguson to get coverage; its also true journalists were regularly and asymmetrically arrested and detained). It's true that both Occupy and Ferguson were declared states of emergency - and so it would be legal for the government to manage public perception in these cases. But we don't have smoking gun evidence to claim that there were concerted, explicit efforts.
American citizens should be aware of these things and discuss with their representatives what level of narrative support they would like their government to supply.
No — if you go through the link, it seems there was a genuine reason, or it was indeed because his domain was similar to "stopfasttrack.ru", which indeed was a spam domain.
Or do you think stopfasttrack.ru was posting 'spam' about viagra?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9736304
Then I see this. As I said, I see a growing amount of censorship that is both ideological and business motivated. This news piece confirms my suspicions.
We embraced closed platforms like Facebook by ignoring their flippant ToS and privacy policies, and by spreading their adoption with supporting Facebook SSO and writing apps on their platform. We made our bed and now we must lie in it.
But Facebook is quite transparent about government censorship, even in the United States; see here: https://govtrequests.facebook.com/country/United%20States/20...
From what I can see it is much more transparent (and much more active) than Twitter, which for some reason the article praises.
It seems only to be castigating Facebook for "censoring" inmates--who are not, themselves, even the ones posting to Faceboook--and then for not reporting information about those removals. It then links to articles about an overreaching New Mexican prison which sentenced an inmate to ninety days in solitary confinement for refusing to tell family and friends to remove Facebook photos. It neglects to mention how Facebook is responsible for that and more importantly that the sentence was thrown out by prison officials (probably because its unconstitutional as hell and they know it). That particular example wouldn't even be a particularly good lead-in to an article about correction department overreach. It is much less useful here.
It is reasonable for Facebook to have terms of service which disallow third party access to user profiles, to suspend profiles of users which violate the ToS, and to have a reporting page specific to a class of user which is likely to violate an individual term. It is also reasonable for Facebook not to report this data as it is essentially private information about the inmates and their use of Facebook. Facebook has more responsibility to protecting its inmate users than it does to reporting that information to the rest of us.
The fact that Facebook has not been reporting these takedown requests raises larger questions about what other kinds of censorship Facebook has been hiding.
That sentence is perfectly standard idiom.
[EDIT: and I commented 5 minutes after you did]
Twitter has historically played much harder ball with the State Department and DoD with regard to account takedowns and content censorship. Though neither, as far as I can tell, have many public statements or publish data about it.
I found no glaring grammar mistakes in the article, reading it 12 minutes after your comment.
> "races the question" ... "euphemism"
These typo / words are not in the article.
> it buries what I hope is its main point--that Facebook should be more transparent--at the bottom of the article.
That is called the conclusion, whereas in the body the author is supposed to present substantiating information, which is what s/he did.
> But Facebook is quite transparent about government censorship, even in the United States
1. Did you check the links on India and Turkey? Facebook released "some information" (which is terrifying if you consider what Facebook collects) about 3470+ accounts. Now, if you consider that some of these accounts are organizations and not individuals, they may have actually released the information regarding tens of thousands of people. Do you know what happens to these people once they are identified? Informal governmental blacklisting, for example, is very common in Turkey if you are critical of government discourses. Who are these users? Why was their information released? How much of it was released? What was the government's reason? Was it investigated by Facebook? And above all, why was it released AT ALL, since Facebook is not bound by these countries' laws when it comes to such practices.
2. When it comes to the US, they just provide a few more breadcrumbs and nothing more.
Search Warrant: About what??? Against whom???
Subpoena: About what??? Against whom???
Emergency Disclosures: About what??? Against whom??? What was the emergency???
Court Order: Where are the case numbers???
Court Order (Other): Where are the case numbers???
Pen Register/Trap and Trace: Who ordered this? Why? Who authorized their order? Was it legitimate? Who investigated that legitimacy within Facebook? Why was it complied with? Why was it ordered?
Title III: About what??? Where are the case numbers???
Is this what you call sufficient transparency for a (effectively) multinational corporation that handles a incredible amount of Personally Identifying Information?
> From what I can see it is much more transparent (and much more active) than Twitter, which for some reason the article praises.
The criteria of "It's better than competitor X" is not a criteria; it's a comparison.
> It seems only to be castigating Facebook for "censoring" inmates.
That is a specific example where EFF has data and uses that data to refute Facebook's position on data that is obscured by Facebook. Their data comes from "information we have received through public records requests filed in several states."
> It is reasonable for Facebook to have terms of service which disallow third party access to user profiles,
How do you define "3rd party"?
> to suspend profiles of users which violate the ToS,
This requires proof. What is Facebook's process in proving "guilt"?
> and to have a reporting page specific to a class of user which is likely to violate an individual term.
How do you define "likely"? What is the mechanism by which Facebook's definition is not clouded by the same prejudice (and against a umber of groups) that clouds yours against incarcerated people?
> It is also reasonable for Facebook not to report this data as it is essentially private information about the inmates and their use of Facebook.
This is an offtopic non-argument. The linked article does not request that people be individually identified in these reports. Even FOIA has a clause against the release of PII.
> Facebook has more responsibility to protecting its inmate users than it does to reporting that information to the rest of us.
Your argument here is "Facebook is protecting its inmate users by booting them." To quote the article, "Facebook has been suspending the accounts of inmates for at least four years at the behest of prison officials [through] an easy and confidential [i.e. the identity of the official is not released to the public] “Inmate Takedown”..."
If this is a form of protection afforded incarcerated users, than I truly wish it were afforded to all Facebook users... The resulting euphoria would be worth watching.
The "conclusion" is not a conclusion, but apparently the main point. It's not addressed until the very end. The article reads roughly Support->Vaguely Related Idea->Announcement of Unrelated Item->Argument. It's all over the place.
1. The article is about censorship and you're castigating Facebook for something else entirely. 2. Twitter, specifically, seems to provide much less information. The information you personally are expecting is, in some cases, information that should be protected, or that may be legally protected through court order or statute.
If Facebook must publish this information, the EFF should be both specific in its criteria and consistent in its application of judgment of whether the criteria has been met. This particular article is neither specific nor consistent. It does a poor job of comparing Facebook to other social media. It does a poor job of even mentioning where Facebook gets it right. It uses poor examples of where Facebook gets it wrong.
> The criteria of "It's better than competitor X" is not a criteria, it's a comparison.
But claiming competitor X is good and competitor Y is bad, while providing evidence of the opposite is at best inconsistent.
> how do you define "3rd party"?
This cannot be a serious question. But if you want to play semantic games, how it is defined in the Facebook ToS is what is relevant.
> This requires proof. What is Facebook's process in proving "guilt"?
Does it require proof? It may be entirely at Facebook's discretion, which is also reasonable. In any case, it should not be difficult to prove that a Facebook user account showing changes was not legally changed by an inmate with no official/legal internet access.
Your statement implies there was no proof, which you do not substantiate and the article neither argues nor implies.
> How do you define "likely"?
If you are running a website and frequently get emails about the same violation of your ToS, setting up a reporting form makes a lot of sense. Are you suggesting Facebook did this "just because" or for nefarious reasons?
> This is an offtopic non-argument.
Hardly. The linked article demands nebulously defined and sometimes inconsistent amounts of transparency.
> Your argument here...
Has been mischaracterized by you.